Nine more hospitals are to be investigated over alarmingly high death rates,
as the fallout from the Mid Staffs scandal spreads across the health
service.

Hundreds of thousands of patients are cared for by the hospitals, which have
had persistently high numbers of deaths, the signal that eventually exposed
Mid Staffs. They include Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, which
is under separate investigation over alleged abuse of patients by Jimmy
Savile.

David Cameron last week announced a probe into five other hospitals as part of
his response an excoriating report into failings at Stafford Hospital, where
hundreds of patients died